By Chuks Oyema-Aziken
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) is currently adopting the predictive maintenance culture across all NAF Engineering and Maintenance units, designed to assist in determining the condition of in-service aircraft and other equipment in order to estimate, ahead of time, when maintenance should be performed.
The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar stated this recently while addressing personnel of NAF Logistics Command, Lagos, during his operational tour of NAF units in the Lagos area.
This CAS said the approach will enable cost savings over routine or time-based proactive or preventive maintenance culture.
He said the predictive maintenance has the advantage of allowing for convenient scheduling of corrective maintenance and prevents unexpected equipment failures. He also noted that with the right data of equipment lifetime, the tendency for increased plant safety, fewer accidents with negative impact on environment, and optimized spare parts handling is assured.
According to him, “We have moved away from proactive maintenance culture to predictive maintenance. This has been possible because we have continued to keep up-to-date data about our spares and current maintenance status of all our platforms. With this, it will enable us to provide spares before they are due for maintenance. It will also reduce downtime while expediting aircraft serviceability.”
The CAS also spoke about the need to continually sustain and enhance NAF’s safety standards. While he re emphasized that safety training will henceforth be compulsory in all NAF training institutions, he also revealed that all NAF institutions have been directed to review their curriculums to include all aspects of safety training.
